“The power of the sea and the sky,” I whisper. And Hart nods.
“I’ve never felt anything like it. That kind of power.”
I shiver and wrap my arms around my chest. I’m thinking of those flashes I’ve been getting. Of the night Elora died.
The wind.
And the rain.
I remember what Hart said about that night. A raging storm came out of nowhere.
Like father.
Like son.
“Lightning hit a couple big ol’ trees. And they went up.” He snaps his fingers. “Like that. Wind took the roof clean off Bernadette and Victor’s place.” Hart stops and digs through his pocket for another cigarette. But there isn’t one. So he curses under his breath and goes on. “But it’s the hail I remember most. Huge, jagged chunks of ice crashin’ out of the dark. People runnin’。 Screamin’。 All bloody. And there’s Dempsey Fontenot standing in the middle of it all holding that dead kid, lookin’ up at the sky and grinnin’ like the devil himself.”
Where was I while all this was going on? I wonder. Inside, I guess. With Honey.
Safe.
I don’t have any memory of any of it.
Hart shrugs. “And that’s when somebody shot him. Blew a hole in his chest big enough to drive a four-wheeler through. And it all stopped. The wind and the hail. Lightning. The rain. All of it. And things were so wild. But I saw who it was. I saw who was holding that shotgun.” Hart turns and pins me down with a hard stare. “And you wanna know who it was? It was Leo, Grey. Leo. Elora’s daddy is the one who killed Dempsey Fontenot. You think that’s a fuckin’ coincidence?”
Hart is wrong. He has to be.
“Why Leo?” I ask, and Hart shrugs.
“Why not Leo? Somebody had to put a stop to it, didn’t they? Before Dempsey Fontenot tore the whole damn town to pieces.”
“Did Elora know that?” I ask. “What her daddy did?”
Hart nods. “I told her that part, too.”
“But Zale couldn’t know it.” I feel like I’m falling. Grabbing for solid ground. The edge of the cliff. A tree root. Anything. But all I get is a handful of air. “How could he possibly know that? He wasn’t even there.” My head is spinning.
My whole world is spinning.
Not Zale.
Please.
Not Zale.
I wanted an answer. But I didn’t want that one.
Hart tips his head back and laughs. He throws his hands up and gestures at the boarded windows. “How could he know that? Are you for real? Jesus. I don’t know, Greycie. It’s the Fucking Psychic Capital of the Goddamn World. You tell me how he knew it.” He looks me dead in the eye. “Maybe Elora told him herself. You said they were friends, right? She was keepin’ that from all of us.”
Hart’s words are suffocating me. I stand up and try to get a deep breath.
But I can’t.
Hart points at the black barrel.
“So right there’s why your new boyfriend would wanna kill Elora. Why he was probably plannin’ to kill you, too. Hell, Greycie, maybe he was gonna pick us all off one by one. All the Summer Children. That’s some real-life Shakespearean drama, right there. Sins of the father and all that shit.”
“But Zale really doesn’t know,” I protest. “He doesn’t know what Leo did. He doesn’t know any of that. He’s been looking for his father this whole time. He didn’t even know what my mother did, until I told him.”
Hart shakes his head. “Why the hell do you believe a thing this guy says? What kind of power does he have over you? We’ve been dickin’ around since you got here – tryin’ to figure out who might want Elora dead – comin’ up with nothin’。 Jesus Christ. And you’ve been sittin’ on the answer since literally day one?” He shakes his head, like he just can’t make sense of it. “And you never breathed a word of it? Not even to me?”
I can’t stand the hurt on his face, so I look away.
“Any more secrets?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“Right,” he scoffs. “Me either.”
Some kind of line has been crossed. And I know that it can’t be uncrossed. Things will never be the same between us.
My head is still reeling. I’m sick and dizzy, trying to come up with a reason I never questioned a single thing Zale said. Why I took him at his word, right from the very beginning. Why didn’t I ask more questions? Push him for more details.
Any details.
Then I remember what Zale told me about his mother. How she had a gift to calm the soul and settle the nerves.